South Asia Daily

I detest backpacks and sneakers

Sarah Silverman, left, with Jerry Seinfeld (A grab from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee) Notice Silverman’s backpack and Seinfeld’s neon yellow sneakers.

I detest backpacks. They look like an outgrowth growing out of people’s backs for which there is no medical cure.

Some people are so attached to their knapsacks that they are no longer two separate things. You cannot tell where their natural human skin ends and the polyurethane coated Cordura Nylon begins. I suspect that the two have bonded and grown into each other. What began as grafting has now fully and seamlessly merged.

Not that I have developed any scientific standards to make this fashion judgment but there is no more inelegant sight in human history than a man wearing brown pleated polyester trousers, a checked red and yellow shirt, white sneakers, and carrying a backpack. That combination says, “I have given up all hope in life.” Incidentally, sneakers are in the same category as backpacks.

My aversion for backpacks is an extension of carrying anything at all, including a wallet. I dislike carrying anything on my person. The weight of my conceit is more than enough. If I must carry something, I must try and minimize the number of things. In my ideal world, people should have multiples of everything they need and want at multiple places. Everybody should have everything, everywhere. That way people do not have to carry anything. In any case, what do people need a backpack for? What have they packed inside that is so very essential that it must mount on their backs and go wherever they are going? Some men are so attached to their backpacks that I wonder whether they have sex wearing those as well.

As you can perhaps guess by now I do not like backpacks and I am rather anal about it. It is entirely possible that I am overstating my disdain for backpacks but it is a safe target. I doubt very much if those who carry them will protest. On the other hand though, most of suicide bombers too carry those. So I should probably stop here.

Having worked up my bile sufficiently, it might be opportune to announce Season 2 of Jerry Seinfeld’s online series ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’. I wrote about the first season in my blog on August 24. Season 2 seems to have gone more commercial with sponsor Acura being integrated into the conversation by Seinfeld saying that he is bringing the sponsor into the conversation. The first episode features the unfailingly and astutely funny Sarah Silverman. One minor quibble is that like all great comedians she too has developed that smug self-assurance that most great comedians have about their material. They know they are unlikely to fail once they have reached a certain level of success. That self-assurance gives them an unintended look of smugness. I mean this as a compliment.

There is at least a tangential connection between my dislike for backpacks/ sneakers and this particular episode. Silverman too carries a backpack just as Seinfeld wears his sneakers. But at least in Silverman’s case it is redeemed by the fact that Silverman is carrying it. See how Seinfeld’s jeans bunches up just above the neon yellow sneakers. There is no redemption for a combination that includes a blazer, T-shirt and sneakers. But that’s just me.

 

 

CCGC, an annoying acronym for the show, serves no particular purpose other than giving two comedians, who have already made a career out their angst-ridden self-absorption, a platform to do more of some of that. I am not contractually obligated to watch it and then comment on it. I do so because somewhere along the line it has captured my imagination; I mean the idea that someone can make money just drinking coffee and making observations.

The segue from my utter dislike for backpacks and sneakers to CCGC is admittedly a labored one. But then you don’t pay me a farthing to read this blog.

India’s great political cauldron has only just begun to heat up

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar

Principles, like most things in politics, are a matter of expediency. They have value only in the context of whether they are advantageous at a particular point. They are situational and not absolute.

There are no core principles in politics simply because they have to change in keeping with a changing core. India, the inventor of situational logic in everything in life, has routinely produced brilliant practitioners of situational logic. Take for instance the inevitable political realignment unfolding right now which has a direct bearing on the outcome of who could be India’s next prime minister in 2014.

There is a political party called the Janata Dal (United) or JD (U), whose foundational philosophy is socialistic, that rules the state of Bihar under its often cryptic but widely respected Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. For the past 17 years, Nitish Kumar’s party has been in political alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose foundational philosophy is rightwing Hindu nationalism. But for expediency there is not much that should have brought and kept the two together for that long. Incidentally, I do not use expediency as moral censure but acknowledge it as the operative reality of politics.

Now that the BJP has chosen to elevate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to be the head of its election management committee and, in popular perception, its likeliest choice for prime minister, Nitish Kumar’s party has chosen to break that alliance “over principles.” If you ever wanted to know how long it takes to discover principles, there is at least one precedent now. For some like Nitish Kumar it can take 17 years. Kumar and the JD (U) severely oppose the emergence of Narendra Modi as the public face of the BJP and by some implication a prospective candidate for prime minister on behalf of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under which the JD (U) and the BJP had originally joined hands in 1996. (Excuse the complex relationships but I can not order those).

The JD (U) controls 20 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower chamber of India’s parliament which decides who rules the country. In a country where there has been a dramatic splintering of the once monolithic political base controlled by the Congress Party, coalition is the name of the ruling game. And like in all coalitions it is those parties which control small but decisive numbers that come to exercise influence in excess of their electoral presence. It is from this standpoint that the newly unattached status of the JD (U) makes it a politically irresistible group for the Congress Party. The lure of someone else’s ex is potent in politics.

Although the BJP-JD (U) split was on the cards for a while, now that it has happened it ought to sober down the otherwise rambunctious supporters of Modi. But then no one in Indian politics thrives on partisan rejection with as much élan as Modi and by extension his legion of supporters. So no one should be surprised if this single-minded, self-absorbed politician sees the breakup as the clearest sign that the time for his own singular rise has arrived. Beyond all the complex machinations one simple fact is that Narendra Modi has got himself a fight on his hands that he is unlikely to forget. Apart from reminding him, if indeed he needs to be reminded, that India is not Gujarat and it will require a whole new way to position himself, even if it means diluting the cult of grandiosity that he has so successfully built up in his home state.

Of course, the breakup by itself does not necessarily mean that Modi will never become prime minister. What it means is that he will have to go back to the drawing board and re-mint himself in a way that expands his acceptability. There is only a slight problem with it. His detractors, which are many and have only grown with the JD (U) flooding those ranks, will do everything to undermine him.

India’s great political cauldron has only just begun to heat up. By the time the national elections are announced it would come to a boil. That’s when I will take the plunge in it.

A mildly wistful reminiscence of telegrams

The fact that my late father Manharray worked for the Indian Post and Telegraph Department in the 1960s gives me some imagined primacy over others to announce the death of telegrams. India’s state-owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has said telegrams will be discontinued on July 15.

It was in the nature of telegrams to be the bearer of out of the ordinary news. They were at once intrusive and integral to life. They were also expensive and were charged per word. People sent them only during an emergency. A postman showing up at unscheduled times invariably meant he was delivering a telegram, which more often than not announced death in the family. Growing up in the 1960s I remember some people who would start weeping even before the telegram or ‘taar’, as it was called, was opened.

Since we lived not too far from the post office, whenever we received telegrams, the glue behind those white paper strips did not have enough time to fully dry. I am sure most Indian families have their own unique telegram stories. I have many as well but rather than telling a specific story I would like to describe the family disruption that the arrival of telegrams caused.

It would begin with the postman opening the squeaky, unlubricated iron gate on a hazy yellow and annoyingly hot summer afternoon. What was about summer afternoons and bad news that they always stuck together? On noticing the postman in his khaki uniform members of the family would drop whatever it is they were doing to prepare for whatever it is that the postman was about to deliver. The postman with a fountain pen wedged behind his ear would take out a light pink folded telegram from his canvas satchel. My grandmother would go into noticeable palpitation.

The postman always wore an air of detachment around his face. He had to be agnostic to the contents of the telegrams he delivered. Oftentimes he had to read and translate the contents for those who did not understand English. In my family everyone understood English, which had its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantages were no one had to be explained. The disadvantages were that everyone had their own spin and perspective and interpretation of the deeper meanings of what a particular telegram said. For instance, if it carried the news of death in the family instant editorials about what might have happened would be offered.

If telegrams heralded good news such as childbirth or wedding or excellent academic performance, the postman would be either tipped or fed sweets or both. It would be an interesting study to find out the incidence of diabetes among the postmen of the 1960s and 70s.

If a telegram announced death, the whole family would examine it as if somehow that piece of paper was culpable. The postman would switch to an expression that was mix of defensiveness (as in ‘I am not responsible’) and empathy.

The telegraph service has been an intrinsic part of the Indian experience for 163 years. Over that period hundreds of millions of Indians have been delivered life altering news in short, terse sentences that almost seemed to reprimand. It is fair to say that the telegram was emblematic of fundamental change for so many Indians. Its discontinuation, necessitated by the great telecom revolution, has been noted by many with great nostalgia.

As I said at the beginning, since my father worked for the Indian Post and Telegraph Department I get some precedence over others. If memory serves me right, Father was rather good at telegraphing. Of course, his association with the department did not mean that when we received “Urgent Telegrams” they carried better news than when others in the neighborhood did. Death happened in our family as well, so did wedding and childbirth and college graduation.

My grandmother Shobhaben had this habit of drinking some water after a telegram was read and its full import digested. As a tribute, I would now take a sip of water.

Rajkumar Williambhai

William (Photo:http://www.royal.gov.uk/)

British researchers have established that Prince William has an “unassailable” genetic link to India dating back 223 years from his mother Diana’s side. Mario Ledwith reports in the Daily Mail of London that, “DNA testing has revealed that Prince William will become the first British monarch of Indian ancestry.”

A DNA analysis of one of William’s relatives’ saliva sample by Scottish scientists has suggested the following:

“The genetic link with India is believed to originate from Williams’s great-great-great-great-great grandmother Eliza Kewark.

Although often described as Armenian, DNA analysis has revealed that she was at least half-Indian and is known to have lived in the country’s western region.”

The ancestry stretches back to the time of the East India Company , one of whose servants named Theodore Forbes had a daughter named Katherine with Kewark. Forbes left Kewark and sent their daughter to live in England. There is a direct genetic lineage from Kewark to William, according to this analysis.

The Indian lineage will end with William since males cannot pass that particular mitochondrial DNA to their children. So Kate and William’s baby will be India-free.

I am not sure if Indians have any reason to celebrate this finding but I am sure that they would confect one to do so anyway. If there is a celebration to be had, Indians will have it no matter what. So whenever he chooses to visit India next, he can be sure that he would be accorded a welcome of unbridled enthusiasm. At least by some pretty stretched implication, India will some day potentially rule England, partially, very partially. If that is not worthy of celebration, what is?

As a royal gesture of acknowledgement of William’s part Indian ancestry perhaps the United Kingdom should announce that Indians will no longer need a visa to travel there. Also, since in keeping with the Indian traditions the prince is now officially related to every one of 1.2 billion odd Indians, all Indian visitors will have the option of staying at any of the royal palaces when they visit. Each one will be allowed to sleep next to the Kohinoor at least for one night.

Rajkumar Williambhai would be well served to know that even being notionally Indian comes with its own cultural obligations, For instance, a guest is never to be turned away without hospitality that must include a meal. So next time he sees me outside the gates of the Buckingham Palace, it is is expected of him to come out, welcome me in and feed me. I will need no appointment. I will just drop by at will at any and all times.

For Prof. Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’

Prof. Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’

Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’ has long been one of my favorite literary figures. Regarded as one of the most important names in Urdu poetry, literary criticism and language scholarship, Firaq, which means separation in Urdu, was one of those naturally charismatic people. A thinker of subtle but charming self-absorption, he was at equal ease teaching English literature (his professional calling) and creating and reciting his Urdu/Persian poetry.

It is a pity that there is a sparse audio-visual record of Firaq because he was such an effortlessly cinematic figure and could have lent himself to a terrific full-length documentary feature. I have seen few people who smoke cigarettes with such relish and yet such detachment at once.

There is a short documentary about him, which was made by India’s Films Division in 1971, available on YouTube. He was already 75 then. Born in 1896, he died in 1982 at 85. There are also a couple of other sessions from a different video about where he holds forth on how language often rises from much more intimate sources such as individual families. (See the video above). It has one of those rare stimulating conversations carried out by Firaq, unmindful of and unselfconscious about the presence of TV cameras. With his cigarette dangling he discusses finer points of language.

He makes a couple of striking points when he says,”Bhasha ka base illiteracy hai. (The base of language is illiteracy).Aur literature kehte hain brilliant illiteracy ko. (Literature is brilliant illiteracy).” He also says that brilliant literature should not be defined by the use of words that ordinary, perhaps even illiterate, people do not use.

“Great literature aur brilliant literature wahi hai ki itne bade bachche ko jo labz malum hai us se who Gita likh le,” ( Great literature and brilliant literature is one where the words that a child this small knows can use to write the Gita),” Firaq says.

He illustrates his point about the accessibility of great literature by giving the example of Charles Dickens and how his cleaning lady could enjoy his books in her free time. He says the great Hindi litterateurs Premchand and Surdas both had this facility.

I admit to not having read Firaq much but from whatever little one has read one can infer his intellectual depth. I say infer because Firaq was a great proponent of being able to infer when one is not well-versed with something.

The short Films Division documentary does an effective job of capturing the more compelling aspects of Firaq’s personality. Obviously gifted with a charming sense of humor and great skill as raconteur, Firaq’s presence at poetic conventions was a major draw. There are a couple of places in this documentary where Firaq opens his recitation with humor. In one he describes how a man falls inside a well. A poet happens to pass by and he too falls inside the well. Rather than looking for ways to rescue themselves, the poet declares that he would recite some verses from his poetry. The other funny incident that Firaq narrates is about a haunted house which no one wanted to buy. A poet, unable to find any home for himself, decides to buy it. He then drives the ghosts away by reciting his poetry.

There is so much to quote from Firaq’s great body of poetic works but for the purposes of this post I would like to cite just one throwaway line from this documentary.

“Zulmat ke seeney mein humdum

Main roz charagha karta hoon.”

(In the heart of darkness, my dear

I always spread light (His literal words are ‘I light lamps everyday’)

Firaq’s poetry was also defined by the influence of nature, something he said he was inspired to do by the likes of Wordsworth. There is a short discussion with students in this documentary about it.

Perhaps I am wrong but one no longer finds this level of erudition and this finesses and sophistication in articulation of great ideas that the literary giants such Prof. Sahay commanded with such lightness of touch. Pay attention to how he says what a civilization like India has had to balance for millennia before it acquired its greatness.

There is zero provocation for this post today, but then do we really need a reason to acknowledge people of such brilliance? I don’t think so. Not that I need any inspiration to write my own poetry but in the midst of watching this documentary I wrote a ghazal which contains a subconscious tribute to Firaq in these two lines:

Their free translation would be:

Battling darkness is my old pastime

But I can no longer keep the fire going using burnt matchsticks

Anti-climactic conclusion to Advani episode

What could have been one of India’s great political dramas has turned out to be a deflated anti-climax. With the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart Lal Krishna Advani withdrawing his resignation as impulsively as he tendered it, one feels a bit cheated.

Advani withdrew his resignation from three powerful party positions within 24 hours of tendering it. His original decision had the makings of a disillusioned patriarch finally unshackling him from the constraints of party discipline and shaking up the whole right wing ideological space. At 85, he need not have felt hamstrung by the fickle niceties of political correctness and carried his epic dissent to its logical conclusion. Instead, he chose to fall in line, apparently at the urging of Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the BJP’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Of course, the RSS has said it had nothing to do with diffusing the crisis caused by Advani’s resignation.

In return for withdrawing his resignation, BJP president Rajnath Singh has promised Advani to pay serious heed to his criticisms about the direction that the party has taken in recent years. With that the whole episode seems like a child throwing a massive tantrum and then settling for a lollipop. As someone who has no direct stake in what happens to any political party, I saw this mainly as a real life drama that should have had a more satisfying conclusion.

With that chapter behind the BJP leadership, the party will now get on with the business of quickly positioning its mascot, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, as its potential prime ministerial candidate. Everything seems to be lining up just right for Modi who is already saying things like “Well begun is half won.” In his mind, he is already prime minister of India. It is the reality’s fault if it cannot keep up with his pace.

India’s next general election, scheduled for 2014, promises to be an exciting one with Modi now inching toward the position he has coveted for a while—his party’s nominee for prime minister. The governing Congress Party has not yet decided to project anyone but political grapevine is betting on Rahul Gandhi, who is himself singularly disinclined. The media desperately wants it to be a faceoff between Modi and Gandhi simply because the contrast is so striking.

One way or the other, I intend parking myself in India for the general election whenever they happen and whoever contests. It is my way of returning to the grimy core of field reporting.

A few observations about Edward Snowden

NSA leaker/whistleblower/hero/defector Edward Snowden (Photo: A video grab from http://www.guardiannews.com/

My pent-up frustration at my Windows 8’s relentless “failure to configure”* updates ever since I installed it a few months ago may finally have a solution. Since the National Security Agency (NSA) has my whole electronic life mapped out the least they could do is to tell me how to fix this fucking problem. After all, it is in their interests that my system is fully updated.

Microsoft, which is among the tech companies reportedly cooperating with the NSA’s massive surveillance program, has not been willing to help me resolve this peculiar failure. I might as well call someone like Edward Snowden at one of the NSA’s many private contractors to help me get over this “failure to configure updates.” Can you believe that ever since I installed Windows 8 I have not updated my system? Do you know what that feels like? It feels like wearing the same underwear for days—no,months—on end.

Speaking of underwear, it seems that might be the only aspect of our lives that may be private right now. But who knows that too may have been compromised already.

Watching Snowden’s interview in The Guardian I was first struck by his crisp articulation of the situation he and the world is in right now. He used a compelling phrase called “turnkey tyranny”, as in the world is hurtling towards turnkey tyranny if it does not check the utterly invasive surveillance program. There is a ring to his answers of odorless, formless, colorless sinister doom on the horizon creeping up towards all of us. It is all so cinematic.

We have been told that Snowden is a school dropout which has prompted this paralyzing realization in my mind. School and college dropouts have made such a habit of shaking up the world. It is no wonder that I went to school, completed it, then went to college and completed it. There is zero prospect of my shaking up the world. Dropping out of school and college seems to be the requirement for those wanting to shake up the world. It is ironic that Microsoft, created by one college dropout named Bill Gates, is one of the companies reportedly choosing not to resist NSA overtures.

Now that I know that my calls to Microsoft for tech support about Windows 8’s “failure to configure updates” may theoretically get swept up in this surveillance program, I might try asking the next tech guy Ramesh to escalate my calls to someone at the NSA. I find it quite hilarious that my calls to the NSA might also get logged into the NSA surveillance program.

As you can probably sense I am trying to dance around the “serious” issue of surveillance by injecting some humor into it. With his decision to come out, Snowden is basically done for the foreseeable future.When The Guardian asked him what he thought was going to happen to him, his short reply was “Nothing good.” At 29, his sense of foreboding is extraordinary. Unless he chooses to somehow vanish, there are those who believe that eventually he will be subjected to the full intensity of the law.

Going by the limited knowledge of his body language culled from The Guardian interview Snowden appears rather calm, except that there are moments when his mouth is parched. That happens during a heightened emotional state that is being somehow suppressed.

His choice of Hong Kong is so obviously curious that one needn’t even ask the question. Now that he has walked into a Chinese territory, albeit freer than mainland China, I do not see how the Chinese government would just leave him alone. Of course, China can make a brilliant tactical move by actually handing over Snowden to America to prove the sincerity of its commitment to forge a new relationship with America as articulated by President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping last weekend. I found it remarkable that the the story was unfolding during Xi’s visit. It would be interesting to know whether Beijing was aware of Snowden’s presence in Hong Kong and, more particularly, whether President Xi or anyone on his staff knew. Snowden’s presence in Hong Kong, presuming that he is still there, is a delicate matter for the Chinese.

On a tangential point, since the NSA surveillance program is so extensive I wonder whether the communication of key Mumbai terror plotter David Coleman Headley was monitored under it and, if so, what specific patterns and mapping resulted from that. I know from having followed the case that Headley was very actively communicating throughout the run-up to the November, 2008, terrorist attacks. He was already being watched because of his past drug-related involvement and visits to Pakistan. In many ways someone like Headley constitutes a perfect target to monitor. Hence my curiosity.

* I had been on the lookout for an opportunity to vent my frustration at the Windows 8 configuration failure. I could not have found a better one.

If 85 is not the right age for a principled stand, then what is?

Lal Krishna Advani (Photo http://www.lkadvani.in/)

Even those virulently enthusiastic about human life and its consequentiality at any age would concede that 85 is an advanced enough age by which the better part of one’s life is practically over. It is also an age by which convictions ought to be firmly rooted and principles finely honed.

So it should not surprise anyone that the 85-year-old Lal Krishna Advani, one of India’s most consequential politicians, has taken what he considers a principled stand. If that is not the right age, then what is? Advani, one of those eternal prime ministers-in-waiting, has resigned from three powerful positions within the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which he founded and built.

Advani’s resignation letter to his party’s president Rajnath Singh has been assertively candid and unambiguous repudiation of what the party has become.

"For some time I have been finding it difficult to reconcile either with the current functioning of the party, or the direction in which it is going," he said.

He said he no longer had "the feeling that this is the same idealistic party" formed in 1951 by Shyama Prasad Mookerji, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Nanaji Deshmukh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee "whose sole concern was the country and its people".

In perhaps the sharpest comment in his resignation letter Advani said, "Most leaders of ours are now concerned just with their personal agendas." That is as swift a kick up many a groin as it could come from Advani. As I said on June 3,(Oh, what a joy it is to quote oneself with a smug sense of I told you so!), “The Narendra Modi as India’s prime minister juggernaut has just hit a major pothole. Probably to Modi’s chagrin, the man digging the potholes is none other than the Bharatiya Janata Party’s current patriarch and his political mentor Lal Krishna Advani.”

Modi, for those of you who may not know such details, has been appointed as the chairman of his party’s election management committee in what is seen as the likeliest springboard to India’s prime minister should the BJP and its allies win big enough in the next general election to form a government. Advani as the progenitor of the BJP as well as someone who made it into a viable right of the center political alternative to the left of the center Congress Party feels profoundly disenchanted at having been pushed into a corner. In the new matrix that has emerged under Modi as the mascot Advani obviously feels himself rendered practically redundant.

In a sense, Advani’s dilemma is not that different from the old school Republicans in the U.S. who are being increasingly marginalized by the more aggressive extreme right described as Tea Party Republicans. The BJP is suffering from what seems like an affliction peculiar to right wing ideologies everywhere which is the shifting of the center to what was once regarded as the core of the right wing ideology. Advani, who was in the 1990s regularly described as a Hindu hardliner, now sounds like a moderate and reasonable voice in the mold of his contemporary and friend, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Having extensively reported on both the Congress and the BJP, I am very well versed with the internal fractures and strengths of these two adversarial ideologies. Advani  has not been, by natural temperament, a right wing demagogue in the manner of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Separated in age by 23 years and politically seasoned by two very different life experiences, it is not surprising that Advani and Modi have reached a point of such public divergence. Abrasive self-assurance has been an important attribute of Modi’s career which appeals to the abrasively self-assured new Indian middle class that finds Advani to be a fuddy-duddy. They forget Modi exists because Advani had the tenacity to build the BJP over the last three decades.

Somewhere along the line, Advani’s own unfulfilled ambitions of becoming prime minister do play a role in the current chaos in the BJP. As I said before, he or his supporters may not have articulated it so clearly but it ought to hurt that Modi has been presented as the BJP’s prime ministerial fait accompli in full view of a visibly healthy, fully cogent and still widely acceptable Advani.

Politics is about not ever foreclosing on any option, irrespective of age. Advani knows that better than most in his party because he has been around longer than them all. Far be it for me to divine what may be in his mind but he could be thinking that at 62 Modi will get many more opportunities to rise to prime minister. In contrast for him, that window is rapidly shutting. I would not be surprised if that thought has crossed his mind. You have to hand it to Advani for maximally using his leverage to send the younger upstarts scurrying to cajole him back.

Having interacted with him quite extensively, I am willing to say that Advani’s motivations are much deeper than just the realization that the prospect of his rise prime minister has become significantly diminished. He perhaps rightly feels a unique sense of ownership about the BJP, which none of the current crop of young leaders can seriously claim. Vajpayee, the only man whose stature takes precedence over Advani’s, has retired and remains unwell. At the very least Advani deserves a much better dénouement than what he is currently experiencing.

Reminiscing about Vespa or Wah-Spaa

Italian model Anna Tonella Autori does make you want to ride Vespa circa 1963 (Photo: Google Art Project’s ‘Historic Moments’ exhibits)

In the late 1960s and particularly throughout the 70s Vespa, or as Gujaratis of a certain generation called it Wah-Spaa as in ‘Wah, kya spa hai!’, was the very definition of luxury transport in India.

Indians did not need the fetching Italian model Anna Tonella Autori to persuade them to buy the scooter. Those who could afford such luxury bought it with unbridled enthusiasm.

On my ritual visit to the Google Art Project I chanced upon its section ‘Historic Moments’, which is a series of snapshots of interesting world events in pictures and videos. The one titled ‘Years of Dolce Vita’ features this charming image. Once you get past the curvaceous Vespa, you do begin to notice equally curvaceous charms of Anna Tonella Autori. It is the sort of name you must pronounce with the Italian intonation even at the risk of being culturally insensitive.

For those riding the lowly bicycle, Vespa was a stunning upgrade. Among the middle class neighborhoods of my hometown of Ahmedabad, the arrival of a Vespa automatically meant someone had come into unexpected wealth. The less privileged neighbors would crowd around the scooter and covet it with near erotic relish. Having been designed in Italy, it had all the right curves. The scooter then seemed like a piece of art. Designers at Piaggio, the makers of Vespa, knew a thing or two about design aesthetics. Everything was considered perfect in a Vespa except, as my friend and fellow journalist Raju Korti pointed out on Facebook, its engine on the one side did make it wobbly and hazardous. Its center of gravity was, well, not that centered. It was a routine occurrence for riders to crash while turning right because that’s where the engine was encased. Funnily enough, even a crash like that was considered a rite of passage among the riders.

Incidentally, Vespa means wasps in Italian. Perhaps the rationale behind naming it so was that the scooter would zip around like a wasp. In India, it certainly did. I never bought a Vespa or for that matter any scooter or motorcycle. I graduated from my bicycle straight to a car. I rode scooters with friends and relatives frequently.

I remember when young women began to ride Vespa in Ahmedabad it was seen to be heralding women’s liberation. For a while it became a statement of liberalism and gender equality among some men to be a pillion rider to a woman driver. Men who rode pillion with a woman driver were considered enlightened because somehow pillion riding to a woman was seen as a position of subservience. Speaking of which, the 1953 movie ‘Roman Holiday’ starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn made it rather cool. The Vespa that Hepburn and Peck rode was accorded a star billing. Of course, there were men who pillion-rode with women drivers for a wholly different reason.

Vespa dominated the Indian market for quite sometime until the emergence of Lambretta, another Italian brand of scooter was introduced to the market in the 1970s. Lambretta never quite became a cultural icon like Vespa but it had its fair share of admirers. Lambretta was considered a little more masculine. It also felt more steady on the road because of its design. The Lambretta business was bought over by the Indian government in 1972 and turned into a state-owned enterprise called Scooters India Limited.

Although the scooters’ sheer utility in ensuring mobility in a market like India was undeniable, it was by no means a glamorous means of transport as it might have seemed because of Anna Tonella Autori or Audrey Hepburn. For one, kick-starting it was quite a painful process which often led to ankle injuries. I remember men in Ahmedabad being summoned by women to kick-start the engine. Not that there were many women like Autori or Hepburn but a mixture of chivalry and a vague thrill of being asked by a woman to do anything at all made young men scramble to kick-start.

I think I have romanticized 1 50-year-old photograph enough. So, so like that.

What if Xi-Obama summit went like this?

The summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping could have gone something like this:

Obama: Welcome to America President Xi. Its an honor to host you. I take it that you already know my talking points, courtesy of Unit 61398.

Xi (laughing): Indeed, Mr. President. Thank you for your hospitality so far although I know that there was some back and forth in the White House about how charming you should be toward me. I take it that you too know my talking points, courtesy of PRISM.

Obama (laughing): In that case, why don’t we dispense with any lengthy discussions? Let me simply say that the United States does not accept points 2, 7, 9 and 11 in your draft agreement.

Xi: And we object to 1,3,5 and 7  in yours.

Obama: There, let’s have our aides work out a joint declaration and we are done. Do you realize how much time we have saved? Don’t you just love hacking and surveilling? For instance, I know that this morning you thought the breakfast sucked because I heard you say so while having mine.

Xi: I know yours sucked too because you actually said, “The breakfast sucks.” In my case you merely inferred because we do not use suck the way Americans do.

A wave of laughter as the two leader shake hands and retire to their respective quarters.

A couple of hours later the aides have come up with the final draft of the joint declaration. Xi and Obama meet again without aides.

Obama: Mr. President, my name has been misspelt as Barrack at the end of the draft.

Xi: What makes you think it is a mistake?  While we are at it, my last name is not Pingpong.

They both laugh again.

Obama: Ohhh, this is so fun…

Xi: Much, you mean.

Obama: Excuse me..

Xi: So much fun, you mean.

Obama: I bet you did not have to hack for that..

Laughter and bonhomie as the joint declaration is signed.

As the two leaders step out to address a joint news conference, there is only one AP correspondent in the room. The leaders are perplexed.

Obama: Where is everybody?

AP correspondent: Mr. President, we already have copies of your joint declaration, courtesy of Unit 61398 and PRISM. I was left here to let you both know. My story is already on the wire. Didn’t the Attorney-General tell you that?

All three laugh. End of story.